Julian Siegel Quartet

“Urban Theme Park”

(Basho Records SRCD35-2)

Julian Siegel is one of Britain’s most versatile saxophonists, at home in a variety of contexts from section work in big bands to co-leading jazz rock titans Partisans. Although surprisingly underrated (or maybe just taken for granted) at home Siegel is a musician with an international reputation. His 2008 Basho double album “Live At The Vortex” was a free-wheeling, largely improvised set recorded with the crack New York rhythm pairing of bassist Greg Cohen and drummer Joey Baron.

“Urban Theme Park” represents Siegel’s long overdue return to the quartet format he last visited on record in 2002 with “Close-up”, an album featuring a line up including pianist Liam Noble, bassist Jeremy Brown and drummer Gary Husband.

“Close-up” was good but “Urban Theme Park” represents a considerable step forward particularly with regard to Siegel’s increasing maturity as a composer. The new album is an ambitious piece of work that covers many bases including a three part “suite”. Long term associate Liam Noble remains from the previous recording and the new quartet is completed by bassist Oli Hayhurst plus Siegel’s long standing Partisans colleague, the brilliant drummer Gene Calderazzo. Playing with old friends seems to bring out the best in Siegel, there’s a freshness and vitality about these performances that’s at odds with the four very chilly looking musicians pictured on the cover (the album was recorded during the coldest English winter for many, many years). 

Appearing here on tenor and soprano saxophones plus clarinet and bass clarinet Siegel produces lively, intelligent post bop with a distinctly British sensibility. Opener “Six Four”, introduced by Hayhurst at the bass, is positively joyous despite the complexities suggested by the title and gets the album off to an exhilarating start. Although Siegel’s is the dominant voice this is very much a group performance with the dynamics of the ensemble central to the piece. Having said that Noble’s gloriously inventive and exuberant solo is little short of dazzling. 

“One for J.T.”, dedicated, almost inevitably, to the great British pianist John Taylor, is equally vital with a complex but infectious 12/8 groove. Calderazzo gives a brilliant performance, reacting superbly to Siegel’s mercurial twists and turns. Indeed his drumming throughout the album is little short of revelatory. Always a powerful performer he has now added greater levels of flexibility, sensitivity and inventiveness to his arsenal. Towards the end of the piece there’s a passage of solo piano but Noble’s percussive, highly personalised style sounds nothing like Taylor. Music this technically accomplished is rarely such fun.

“Heart Song” slows the pace a little with Siegel switching to clarinet, an instrument of which he is becoming increasingly fond. Essentially this is a ballad performance although there’s plenty of bravura in the opening duo exchanges between clarinet and piano. Siegel’s later explorations are more ruminative and Noble’s solo as full of invention as ever.

The effervescent “Keys To The City” utilises West African rhythms and features joyously sparkling solos from Siegel on tenor and Noble at the piano plus a substantial feature for the excellent Hayhurst.

The twelve and a half minute suite “Game Of Cards” borrows its title and structure from Stravinsky’s ballet “Jeu De Cartes” but I’d like to think that Siegel has also taken inspiration from the mind boggling card tricks performed by amateur magician Joey Baron. The suite is sub divided into three movements or “Deals”. The first, “Dead End” develops from Hayhurst’s bass vamp and incorporates a typically slippery soprano solo from Siegel powered by Calderazzo’s urgent but intelligent drumming. The quirky, contrapuntal"Get Lucky” incorporates a lengthy feature for the dexterous Hayhurst before Siegel’s sax provides the bridge into a volcanic showcase for Calderazzo. Bass and drum grooves provide the jumping off point for the closing section “Fast Game” which features frenetic unison passages, a typically feverish Noble solo and more fireworks from the irrepressible Calderazzo. “Game Of Cards” is admirably ambitious and succeeds brilliantly with regard to both the playing and the writing. 

Then comes a radical change of style as Noble switches to electric keyboards for the spooky, spacey long lined impressionism of “Lifeline”, a kind of deep space tone poem full of ethereal bleepings and shimmering percussion.

The title of “Interlude” is something of a misnomer. At a little over seven minutes it’s a joyous workout for Siegel on bass clarinet. One of the country’s leading exponents of the instrument Siegel makes it sound almost impossibly jaunty on this delightful track. His agility is staggering and he receives characteristically excellent support from his superb band.

Cedar Walton’s “Fantasy in D” represents the only outside material on the album. Calderazzo’s opening drum barrage presages a scintillating high speed bop rendition of the tune with Siegel blistering on tenor and Noble leaping and exuberant on piano. Calderazzo enjoys a series of further drum breaks and Hayhurst is busily propulsive almost throughout.

The closing “Drone Job” is a return to the territory first visited on the earlier “Lifeline”. Noble’s keyboard drones and other effects provide the backwash for Siegel’s impressionistic saxophone musings. There’s a hint of early Weather Report, maybe electric era Miles Davis too, but also something very contemporary as the piece gathers momentum and the playing becomes more garrulous and belligerent. It has been suggested that the Partisans album “Soupuss” helped to kickstart the Brit Jazz “skronk” movement. Here Siegel appears to draw influence from a scene that he (no doubt unwittingly) helped to instigate.

“Urban Theme Park” matches the intensity of those celebrated Partisans recordings but manages to do so acoustically. There’s the same sense of urgency and a strong sense of a group mentality about this quartet. There are some superb individual moments but it’s the collective identity of the ensemble that’s paramount in this tightly knit music with its stunning ensemble passages, contrasting dynamics and lightning twists and turns. Everybody plays brilliantly and none more so than Siegel himself. Immaculately recorded by Curtis Schwartz “Urban Theme Park” is an instant classic which, if there’s any justice, should come to be regarded as a landmark album in British jazz. Critical reaction thus far suggests that Siegel is at last beginning to win the respect that his undoubted talents deserve.     

 

 

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